The home-building recovery has been slow and steady – and nearly nine years after the housing crisis, housing construction isn’t yet fully healed.

That’s probably a good thing.

It means housing construction will continue to buoy economic growth for some time — and data out this week will shed light on the strength of the residential construction sector.

The National Association of Home Builders releases its monthly index of builder confidence Monday, followed on Tuesday by the Commerce Department’s data on how many new homes were started in April.

Builder confidence is a reasonably good predictor of housing starts, the process of breaking ground on a home, NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz told MarketWatch.

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